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2007-08-27 - 9.30pm previous entry next entry
First trip to the beach! And a tick. Urgh.
I love the fact that we live very near to one of London's Royal Parks. It's vast, and largely untamed, and beautiful, and full of birds and animals. It even has wild deer!
I have just realised that I also hate the fact that we live very near to one of London's Royal Parks full of wild deer with ticks that carry Lyme Disease - one of which was found embedded in Arthur's upper thigh this morning. Ugh. Neil took the boys for their usual walk in the park yesterday, and I can't BELIEVE we didn't notice the tick before bed last night. But anyway, there it was this morning, plain as day. Neil had to go out to buy some antiseptic wipes as we didn't have any antiseptic in the house (yet another annoyance - WHY, with two toddlers in the house, are we not more prepared for first-aid-ish type incidents?!). And we consulted the internet and tweezed the tick out, and rubbed antiseptic on the spot where it had been. Thirty percent of ticks at this park carry Lyme Disease, and I feel really quite anxious about it. There is no way to know if the tick that bit Arthur carried it or not, until a few weeks go by and we see if he develops symptoms. I am taking him to the doctor tomorrow (it's Bank Holiday Monday today - as it would be whenever we might have a good reason to go to the doctor *sigh*), and we have kept the tick (alive and kicking, by the way) in a container as per the suggestions of the sites I read online.
Please God do not let my little boy contract Lyme Disease. Some of the stories online are REALLY scary. There's even a small risk of fatality. Oh my gosh. I also do NOT want him basically experiencing M.E. I know how much that totally sucks. The good thing is, if he DOES get it, the earlier it is diagnosed, the better, because he would go on antibiotics I think, and that is better if started earlier. I am just praying and praying that he doesn't get it. Please God!
Anyway. Onto a different subject.
On Saturday we all went to Littlehampton beach for the afternoon, with our church! It was so nice! The boys have NEVER been to the seaside before, so it was extra special. I am NOT a beach person. I think you either are or you aren't. Give me mountains, lakes, or basically anything GREEN, any day. But beaches do not thrill me at all. Sand gets everywhere, wind blows yet more sand everywhere, you get too hot, and step on things that hurt your feet. And there's not much to do. But I don't hate them. I did have a nice time! Especially since the little ones had a great time too. I took a ton of photos of them experiencing the sea for the first time - they paddled with their clothes on, since we have no swim wear for them. They got pretty wet up to their nappies, but we just changed them the moment we got back up the beach to our blanket. We brought lots of dry clothes and nappy changes with us for such a purpose! We also had lunch on the beach - we packed a picnic, which was NO FUN with all the sand and wind and no-place-to-put-my-sandwich-while-I-brush-sand-off-a-small-boy's-for-the-millionth-time.
But the boys both loved the sand and seaweed underfoot, and they loved paddling, and building sandcastles (especially Arthur, with the sandcastles!). Matthew walked CRAZY distances and didn't want to stop for anything. He just walks as far as anyone else these days. He rarely crawls any more. I got some video footage of him having a little steppy-step around the blanket/pushchair, just feeling the sand and dried seaweed beneath his feet, but Neil has taken the boys out and they have the video camera with them, so I can't upload it at the moment.
But here are the photos (there are lots, be warned!):
They had such a great time! And didn't burn - yay! We kept their hats on and plastered them in factor 50 kiddie sun-cream. We wore the same ourselves, and we were the only people at church who weren't SCARY shades of red and purple the next day at church! I can't fathom why people don't have any sense in the sun. Maybe things are improving on that front in general here, but there are still a LOT of really daft people out there getting burnt.
It was 1.5 hours on the way there and again on the way back, which we haven't really managed successfully in the past with the kids, but it went fine in the end, despite a few nerves over it! There was NO traffic, to our surprise! Matthew fell asleep the instant we set off, having been deprived of his morning nap, and slept literally all but the last 10 minutes of the journey! Arthur kept asking when we would be there, and eventually, about halfway through the journey, I said that it would take us quite a while to get there yet, and suggested that he could have a little sleep while he waited, if he liked. To my amazement, he said, "Oh, okay." and went straight to sleep!!!!! Soooo not like Arthur! Of course, he wasn't as tired as he needed to be at bedtime as a result, but it was good that he napped anyway. He slept most of the remaining 45 minutes of the journey.
On the way home it was okay, except that Matthew cried and cried for some of it. At the beach, when we were changing his nappy, the excellent light (and the fact that I was making faces to make him giggle) allowed me to see that he has just cut two new teeth! He has a new top molar (his first one!) on the right - the same one that Arthur got first. That has a tiny white corner through, so I reckon it came through within the previous 48 hours. I had noticed the "eroded" dent in his gum a couple of days before, so I knew it was coming. But I was also surprised to find a bottom incisor as well! He only had his bottom two middle teeth (six in total, with four at the top in the middle), but he has just got the one next to those on the right. It is coming in quite a way behind the others - I hope that is okay and that they'll straighten out! It looked even newer than the molar - maybe only within the previous 24 hours. So the poor little boy was just chewing on his hand and crying his heart out on the way home. We had to stop and give him some Calpol (thank goodness I had a sachet in my bag!). He seems otherwise unsually fine with the teething though. I'm quite surprised he's been as little bothered by it as he has. Maybe he'll get worse as the rest of the molar pushes through? Or maybe he got lucky this time? He usually teethes worse than this, and I expected worse with the molars. Anyway, it's been MONTHS since he got any teeth, so I'm glad to see some coming in again at last! He now has 8 teeth! I think the top molar on the other side won't be far behind. I can feel a real pokey bump in the gum over it.
I think I will save this in Word and wait till I can get the little clip of Matthew walking at the beach uploaded. I really want to post it here, and it will be kind of out of place if I don't post it with the entry all about the beach and the photos. I will try to do that later, and then just paste this entry in and post it. I'm going to rest up now, while the boys are still out. They are at Kew Gardens this afternoon! We are avoiding the park for a while, yeurgh!
Back! It's 9.30pm now and I have finally uploaded the video to YouTube. It's 3 minutes long - my longest video yet, I think! YouTube seem to be annoyingly slow these days, so I hope it doesn't take just TOO LONG to load for viewing. Anyway, here it is! Matthew was walking around, feeling the sand and dried seaweed (which he especially found interesting!) underneath his feet. He seemed kind of wobbly when he was doing that, but he was just stopping to feel the sensation I think. When he wants to walk to get somewhere, he goes pretty fast now. He also tried to eat stones from the beach a lot! Hence me trying to get him not to rather a lot in the first part of the video!
I WISH I could remember something funny that Arthur said to finish the entry, but it has all fallen out of my head suddenly! I have also started to upload (to my computer, not YouTube yet) 5 other video clips of the boys recently. Some were a good few weeks ago now, but I also have a little clip that Neil took today at Kew Gardens. Anyway, I need to post those soon! Hopefully not allll at once, otherwise it will just be too many videos at once! And take ages to load, or something.
Anyway, I'll try to update again soon!
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